Disney, Universal Studios sue Midjourney for AI-based copyright infringement

Disney and Universal Studios, along with several subsidiaries, on Wednesday sued the Midjourney artificial intelligence company, seeking a jury trial to hear their copyright infringement claims. According to the suit, filed in a California federal court, Midjourney’s AI image generator was trained on the media companies’ copyrighted works. The generator allows users to create high-quality images, and soon videos, of Disney and Universal characters without providing credit or payment to the plaintiffs, the lawsuit stated. They called the image generator a bottomless pit of plagiarism.

Midjourney, which made $300 million last year, ignored requests from Disney and Universal to stop infringing their copyrighted works, according to court documents. The AI company also refused to add safeguards against infringement, such as blocking user prompts that seek to generate images of copyrighted characters, the plaintiffs said.

Did Midjourney respond to the lawsuit? In a Wednesday conference call with users, Midjourney CEO David Holz said he couldn’t discuss the lawsuit, but added that Midjourney would likely be around for a long time, according to a report by the Associated Press.

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